Floating behind me,
a sea of blue, an immense sphere
comprising all that I know,
adore and despise,
breathe and asphyxiate,
drink and drown.
Ahead, you glisten, in quiet peril
reflecting light, juxtaposed in endless black,
after reporting a problem, drifting away,
brave smile in your voice
unintelligible
at this growing distance.
“You’re too late,” you said,
while still in range,
the warmth in your voice
transcending the void,
inexplicably soothing
my chilly fingers
and frosty extremities.
“Oh shit,” I said,
profanely breaking protocol
as the aspect of you
slowly shrank to a point of light.
“I’m sorry,” I offered to the magnets
within the transmitter mic,
a vain effort to overrule
our physical plane.
“It’s ok,” you said tenderly,
reassuring neither of us,
us both ignoring the
depleting oxygen alarms.
“I’m on to my next waypoint.
We’ll have to rendezvous
at the next target window,”
you declare as if our time were not
fleeting, finite,
our fates fixed.
You disappeared beyond the thin blue line,
leaving me to contend with the enormity
of the pale blue light and
an hour of radio silence,
floating above our northern hemisphere,
tilting away, towards winter.
“You free?” your voice vibrated
into my anxious receiver
after a maddeningly long silence
as your glimmer emerged
from the far-side,
rising to rival Venus-glow
and moondust.
“Yes,” I replied quickly,
maneuvering towards a
rendezvous altitude.
“I’m listening. I’m here.”
Then everything went null,
no heat, no cold,
not even light or shadow or grey,
leaving us clasping onto nothing.
***
“Your move, Mr. Bedroom Eyes,”
the words oozed from her coiled rubies,
mingling with her strawberry scent,
joining the rest of my taunted senses.
“She’s made so right
for all the wrong things,”
I think to myself
in her moon-drenched room,
willfully ignoring my own complicities.
Even when she turns away,
concealing her lewd loveliness
in muted midnight shadows,
her elongated shaded nudity
jiggled in ways that seemed
to beckon to a deeper need
transcending the lust and greed
gripping us within this bizarre gravity.
“And don’t you dare pretend that this,”
she added, gesturing generally at the
space between us, “is all one-sided.”
She read me effortlessly, relentlessly
just as she always had, dynamically
consoling, enticing, demanding,
“It’s just us now; be honest.
Don’t act like you don’t want this.
No lies between us tonight.”
She wasn’t made for me,
but her eyes perpetrate the lie;
giving none of the game away,
expecting to be taken,
inviting me to consume
all that I crave to taste,
daring me to meet
where her heat beckons;
the divine junction of where abstraction
melts into sensation, defining touch.
Using only the sight of her
copper-kissed marbled frame,
the ripened flowered goddess’ scent,
and the hot-buttercreamed
sound of her verbal dare,
she deftly sculpted my need
to close the distance,
to thrust my ugly intent
deep inside her beautiful taunt,
to drown her velvet purrs within
undercurrents of my straining grunts,
our bodies rising, falling in unison,
fueled by primal need to occupy
the same finite space simultaneously.
This is what I want
and what she invites.
Of this, I cannot lie.
But it’s also true then, that if we
shackle ourselves to our desires,
indulging ourselves, yielding to them,
we will forever be enslaved by them.
I take a step backwards, fussing with
half the buttons on my shirt that I
don’t recall how they came undone.
Turning towards me, her smile widened
leaning into my gaze, the moonlight falling
upon her contoured sex slowly opening
in my direction, cooing her incantations;
“Even now, you would deny your ache
to possess me, knowing by your pulse
that you were already mine long before,
when we first exchanged glances,
even in that crowded space of fortunes
untold, we saw what we saw in each
other’s eyes, the clarity of potential,
the unspoken intent, and even then,
I knew you were mine,
and that you wished it so,
and while you looked away,
you couldn’t help but to return
to my gaze to see if I was
still looking, and of course I was,
with each time our eyes met,
from you, I stole yet another breath
till now as you stand apart from me,
allowing yourself to breathe
only when I will it;
draw breath now and
tell me, am I wrong?”
I look away, failing spectacularly
in my task to rebutton my shirt.
“Look at me,” she commands.
I comply, my chest becoming tight.
“Breathe,” she says gently, and
I felt my chest relax as I obeyed.
“Now, don’t lie to me,” she demands,
“and don’t lie to yourself, either.
Right here, right now, speak truth.
Tell me what you want.”
“You,” I confess, my chest
once again restricting airflow.
“Who rules your air, your earth,
your body, your soul?” she asks,
knowing the answer.
“You rule me,” I answer,
my unbuttoned shirt now
on the floor behind me,
discarded with my integrity.
“Why are you still dressed then?”
she asked, and then suddenly I wasn’t.
“Still your move, Mr. Bedroom Eyes,”
she taunted again. “I can’t do
everything for you, you know?”
I moved towards her,
overwhelmed by the ache
to feel my skin pressed into hers.
Just as our lips pressed
colors into touch,
just as I tasted her scarlet
smeared onto me,
I smirked at my
illusion of helplessness,
yielding to the power exchange
we demanded the moment
our paths crossed.
***
never understood her,
wish I could’ve felt I was
good-enough for her,
the most popular girl in school,
the top-of-the-class, with class to boot,
the most smartest, the biggest-hearted,
the most valedictorian-charted,
I valued her diction; her glory from afar,
like the twinkle of the stars in her eyes,
she spied me in the lower-brackets
perched in the basement of my thought-lint,
never meant to breathe the same air,
but she shared her atmosphere,
she grabbed my booty in the hallway
with a blue-wink,
she made me think that she was fruity
and all the way loony,
cause she was same age as me,
but she carried her energy
like a Motown boomer; like she’d sooner
rub elbows with Gladys, Ross, and ‘em,
and it was madness that she’d
waste her chi on me
you see, my bracket’s in the basement,
it consists of only me,
indeed, her tactics out-of-phase meant
insistence was her sweet-tea
but can’t you see? Her judgment’s clouded
like an imperfected diamond,
she thinks I’m a find, a rare beautiful kind
of boy deserving her time, that alone
among dissenting voices of mine
should disqualify her from sanity
and sound choices refined
you see, my bracket’s in the basement,
it consists of only me,
indeed, her tactics out-of-phase sent
persistence to how we be
my syndrome hooked right in-place;
I see her and stutter,
her skin tone looked like it
tasted like peanut butter,
I wish my vocabulary
could’ve carried verbs that varied
from “uhh” and “uhm”, but she
carried our conversing beyond the peepers
and pursed-lips of
bemused green-eyed gatekeepers
I never made a move from the basement,
but the placement of her groove made me
reassess the fallacy of classes
from behind coke-bottle glasses
where she said my eyes
were too pretty to be so sad
and her smiles evaporated fog,
eradicated smog, changed air currents,
and lent me change in perspective,
and her elective had one smile
specifically for me
you see, my bracket was in the basement,
it consisted of only me, but indeed,
her tactics, out-of-phase,
lent resistance to my reality
***
telling our kids
the kid-friendly parts
of our tale from the
puppet-show all the way
to their smiles, living
a lifetime of smiles
that would certainly had been
had my childish grip
on my fragile vulnerability
matched your Black Girl
Magical openness
within the moment
of you opening to me
in front of God,
blue sky, glaring sun,
and leering bystanders.
But we both know that
rehearsal and reality
live two separate lives.
That’s not how it went down.
Oh, I did scoff though.
It’s what I did best when
looking for coiled demons
and ghouls hunting for
a pound of free flesh.
In every corner
of every heart,
I found shadows
of cynical weather
whether under blue sky
or not.
Pinning down demons
I thought I saw,
I scoffed and told you
it depended on if
you could tell me
what kind of fool you thought I was,
turning on my heel
to the sound of whoops and ahhs,
content at ripping out your heart
in front of our peers
before you had access to mine.
But as I peeked over my shoulder,
expecting your smirking derision,
instead, there was only the specter
of sincere aftermath, and tears
willing themselves not to fall.
That was ages ago,
but even now,
when I think of you,
I wish I hadn’t blocked
the gift you’d given us.
I wish I said the lines
and kissed you
like I so desperately
wanted.
I wish our last moments
together
were so much more than that;
more than just one of many
terrible rehearsals.
***
You’re a pain in my ass; sassy so-and-so.
Atypical opening as odes go, I know.
But your fiery spirit serves you well thus far,
and as far as you’ve come,
who the hell knows where you’ll go?
I’m going to level with you here, dearest one;
this wasn’t supposed to have rhyme or meter.
In fact, I almost wrote another clichéd line
– about catching the stars, as if!
I mean, I know, right? – but
you’ve been earthbound
for a quarter-century now,
so no more fairy tales.
You’re as tough as I raised you, tougher
than I envisioned, and I’m relieved for it.
You’re tempered for a cruel world, and yet
you refuse to let it make you unkind.
And while I’d love to take all the credit,
like I knew the masterpiece of you
was hidden in the marble all along,
you are the artist of your destiny;
I’m just pleased to see who you are
and who you will become.
I say again, as it is a good catchphrase;
you’re a pain in my ass; sassy so-and-so,
and I’m lucky to have you around, I know,
wherever you go, I’ll be with you always.
Oh, and please rinse your dishes.
I’m your dad; I’m not your maid.
***
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 